Spirit-lifting cakes

Frosting therapy: Emma Thomas aka Miss Cakehead started the Depressed Cake Shop to help people deal with their depression through baking. - Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT

The woman behind the Depressed Cake Shop believes her pop-up shop will get people talking about mental health.

They say baking soothes the soul. How can it not? There is something so reassuring about the ritual – quietly weighing out butter, sugar, flour, cracking eggs, whisking, beating and folding. “If you’re feeling a little bit down, a bit of kneading helps,” Mary Berry once said. It is not just indulging in the end results – the cake, the biscuits, the scones – that helps to brighten up a blue day, but the therapeutic process itself.